Deathwatch, day 15,558
It's been 15,558 days since I began dying. From the moment I breathed, I started to die. Lucky is the animal man that knows his mortaltiy, blessed and cursed by equal measure.
I used to write a lot, back when I was younger and had a few more catalysts happening in my life. Mostly when I was drinking. But I was also dating, having relationships, confrontations, interactions, catalysts, things that pushed my feelings. I haven't had that for some time. I've been alive, but the spark is gone. I don't drink anymore either.
For a long time I drank the old axiom; write drunk, edit sober. But that was just a filter for my feelings. Still, it was like a valve that opened and let my thoughts roam. Now I feel restricted, not empty, more like idling in neutral.
Oh I still have my recreations, but nothing so raw s drinking. Drinking was primal, from the pit. Not good or bad, just was. Now it's more cerebral, but unfortunately I'm a bit less capable in that department. I can still talk a good game, but I can't put it down in the way as I used to.
And it's not the same for me anymore. For me it was personal, I was connected to my writing. I held the pen and paper, with my own actions I formed the words on the paper. It all goes back to putting pen to paper, the ideal, the freedom, the speaking of one to many, the liberation from the confines of my mind as it passed physicaly through my arm to my hand to the pen to the paper.
I've never been able to quite capture that depth of feeling with a computer. But then it never clicked for me with a typerwriter or word processor either. It's not just the keyboard as agent of medium, it's the whole historical ideal of speaking to the masses. The liberation of the printed word.
I don't view fire as an invention. It was just a matter of time before lightening struck a tree and caught it on fire and some knob ofa caveman figured out he could light a stick with it and carry it back to the cave. Discovering it was chance circumstance, not deliberate design. Now the guy that figured out you could chip some flint, that I could give some props to.
But the first real invention to me was the wheel. And it was the literaly the mother of all inventions. So much sprang from the wheel, it wasn't jsut the wheel that impacted us but what it begat. For one, the pully or the block and tackle, ball bearings, gears, axles. Mostly the pully I guess. Pulley?
Anyway, the next truely significant invention for me was movable type, my little love of words. Liberated from the confines of a repressive religious state, for good and ill, and there's been plenty of ill, disimination of information to the masses was unleashed like a hellish Pandoric, uh, Pandora, I guess.
The next invention to spawn more parts then it's sum is the Internet. I put it no less than in the ranks of the wheel and movable type in it's significance in the advancement of the human race. But even so, I find it distant in so many ways.
I talk to people in other countries on a daily basis more than I talk to people in the next room. Ok, that's allegorical, but still apt. And I actually do converse, at least in type on forums every day with people in a dozen different countries. Which is really freaking cool, all in all. But the expanded freedom and knowledge has come at the cost of lessening my interaction with those more immediatly around me. Why should I go out into the cold, cruel world and risk embarrasment when I can get online and talk to people worlds away with no fear of personal risk?
The temptation is alluring.
I used to write a lot, back when I was younger and had a few more catalysts happening in my life. Mostly when I was drinking. But I was also dating, having relationships, confrontations, interactions, catalysts, things that pushed my feelings. I haven't had that for some time. I've been alive, but the spark is gone. I don't drink anymore either.
For a long time I drank the old axiom; write drunk, edit sober. But that was just a filter for my feelings. Still, it was like a valve that opened and let my thoughts roam. Now I feel restricted, not empty, more like idling in neutral.
Oh I still have my recreations, but nothing so raw s drinking. Drinking was primal, from the pit. Not good or bad, just was. Now it's more cerebral, but unfortunately I'm a bit less capable in that department. I can still talk a good game, but I can't put it down in the way as I used to.
And it's not the same for me anymore. For me it was personal, I was connected to my writing. I held the pen and paper, with my own actions I formed the words on the paper. It all goes back to putting pen to paper, the ideal, the freedom, the speaking of one to many, the liberation from the confines of my mind as it passed physicaly through my arm to my hand to the pen to the paper.
I've never been able to quite capture that depth of feeling with a computer. But then it never clicked for me with a typerwriter or word processor either. It's not just the keyboard as agent of medium, it's the whole historical ideal of speaking to the masses. The liberation of the printed word.
I don't view fire as an invention. It was just a matter of time before lightening struck a tree and caught it on fire and some knob ofa caveman figured out he could light a stick with it and carry it back to the cave. Discovering it was chance circumstance, not deliberate design. Now the guy that figured out you could chip some flint, that I could give some props to.
But the first real invention to me was the wheel. And it was the literaly the mother of all inventions. So much sprang from the wheel, it wasn't jsut the wheel that impacted us but what it begat. For one, the pully or the block and tackle, ball bearings, gears, axles. Mostly the pully I guess. Pulley?
Anyway, the next truely significant invention for me was movable type, my little love of words. Liberated from the confines of a repressive religious state, for good and ill, and there's been plenty of ill, disimination of information to the masses was unleashed like a hellish Pandoric, uh, Pandora, I guess.
The next invention to spawn more parts then it's sum is the Internet. I put it no less than in the ranks of the wheel and movable type in it's significance in the advancement of the human race. But even so, I find it distant in so many ways.
I talk to people in other countries on a daily basis more than I talk to people in the next room. Ok, that's allegorical, but still apt. And I actually do converse, at least in type on forums every day with people in a dozen different countries. Which is really freaking cool, all in all. But the expanded freedom and knowledge has come at the cost of lessening my interaction with those more immediatly around me. Why should I go out into the cold, cruel world and risk embarrasment when I can get online and talk to people worlds away with no fear of personal risk?
The temptation is alluring.
posted by opus512 at 10:37 PM
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